Billows and Smoke

these constantly orbiting around me at a 10ft radius

“Silent Hill 1” (1999) 

me waiting for someone to find my body in security

Thesis: the rise of fanwank and anti culture correlates directly with diminished understanding of what “romantic”, in a literary sense, actually means.

It doesn’t mean “this is ideal or healthy or even realistic”. It means “this is beautiful, this is tragic, this is grotesque, this stirs emotion”, even if it’s not, as @starryroom puts it, something you would be comfortable seeing play out in front of you at Taco Bell. It’s about grandiosity and mythology and heroism writ large. It’s about playing with the id, as beautiful and terrible as it can be. 

LET LOVE AND LUST BE MONSTROUS.

i feel like Guillermo del Toro ghostwrote that

“I didn’t say I liked it. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”

- Oscar Wilde 

if you want to revitalize your relationship with tumblr just abandon it and go be exclusively on twitter for a year and that year is 2020. like choosing to shut yourself in a dark box scrambling your own brain with a cobbler's awl for 18 hours a day. nightmare slide projector of apocalyptic "news" flickering unstoppably past your eyeballs until your blood is so thick with stress hormones that you're essentially circulating pure meth, and the resulting derangement makes you think it is your Responsibility To Post because of Awareness. not here, baby! i love to scroll for an hour and see nothing but gifs from obscure early-'00s luca marinelli movies. oh, sure, you apparently can't put the word "butt" in the tags anymore, but that's barely a blip on the radar of ridiculous social media platform choices. this is the garden of fucking eden to me now

wow

Thought I’d post this here too! part of the #samecharacterchallenge on Twitter. Been drawing him a lot lately 😬

also WHY does every american lit or american history or w/ever course contain the entire history and writings of england & greater europe up until the colonies but NO documentation of the oral histories and stories from actual native american tribes and look at how that influenced and was influenced by european traditions to create the “american” story. like i KNOW why but christ

the first ever anthology of native american poetry was published this week and barnes and noble has a 1998 anthology of native american plays and those are literally the only two anthologies of native american literature i could find and i am PHYSICALLY INSISTING that u buy them and support the native activists and authors who pushed for them to published because holy shit y’all

IF YOURE AN ENGLISH SPEAKER HERES SOMETHING YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW:

IN THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN, DANTE’S INFERNO RHYMES. THE ENTIRE THING.

THE ENTIRE DIVINE COMEDY RHYMES.

HEARING MY ITALIAN PROFESSOR READ THE FIRST CANTO OUT LOUD IN THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN WAS A FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE FOR ME.

I COULDNT UNDERSTAND A WORD OF WHAT WAS BEING SAID BUT EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE ROOM WAS HIT WITH THE SUDDEN AND INTENSE FEELING THAT THE PERSON WHO WROTE THESE WORDS WAS A MASTER OF THEIR LANGUAGE.

IT IS FAIR TO CALL THE DIVINE COMEDY TRANSCENDANT IN ITS BEAUTY.

* not just rhyme its uhmm all lines have 11 syllabes and it rhymes like ABA BCB CDC etc etc etc for EVER very good

ITS A POETIC FORM CALLED TEZRA RIMA THAT IS FAMOUSLY DIFFICULT TO USE WELL

AND MOST ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS DO KEEP VERY CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL 11 SYLLABLE METER

NEVERMIND POST CANCELLED

NOTES OF THIS POST:

50% AWESTRUCK ENGLISH SPEAKERS

40% BAFFLED ITALIANS

9% PEOPLE WHO DONT UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RHYME AND VERSE

1% HUMAN PET GUY

… are u telling me that English translations don’t follow the original rhyming

TRYING TO MAKE THE DIVINE COMEDY RHYME IN ENGLISH WOULD ABSOLUTELY BUTCHER IT

MOST ENGLISH POETRY IS BASED OFF ALLITERATION AND STRESS RHYTHMS BECAUSE ENGLISH IS A FRANKENSTIEN LANGUAGE WITH SO FEW RHYME GROUPS THAT RHYME OFTEN COMES OFF AS AWKWARD AND SING-SONGY

ITS WHY SHAKESPEARE IS SO IMPRESSIVE HE ROUTINELY MANAGED TO BEAT ENGLISH INTO SHAPE LONG ENOUGH TO RHYME FOR TEN WHOLE LINES WHILE MAKING IT SOUND PERFECTLY NATURAL

There’s a quote from Aijaz Ahmad about translating subcontinental languages into English which hits on this same point, specifically using the example of a 16th century bhakti poetess:

Quick redraw and color of Business!Snape because I still think about this AU … @billowsandsmoke I haven’t forgotten about that amazing piece you wrote!!! Everyone should read it HERE

:DDDDDDDDDD

like, the most compelling ships for me always stem out of one thing: the characters have a profound, ongoing effect on each other’s senses of selves. when they are apart, the characters’ actions are still affected by each other. the way they approach the world changes because of the other. 

which is this deeply Austenian view of ideal romantic relationships as mechanisms by which we come to know ourselves better and become better versions of ourselves. good romance, for me, is always tied in with a sense of self-actualization, and the way in which a beloved partner allows a person to know themselves better.

ok and

this includes #problematic ships. to bastardize a flannery o’connor quote, love changes you, and change is violent. especially when things challenge our sense of self. characters lash out, project, run away—will do anything so that they won’t face their core inner self. and real intimacy is this precious gift where people can actually confront that self with another person who will say “i love you still.” 

morally bad characters who attempt to change are compelling, because it reflects the psychic violence we carry with us and our attempts to heal from that. so-called redemption narrative are almost always, in actuality, healing narratives. the idea that we could heal from the violence we have done to others and to ourselves is powerful. 

further unasked for thoughts

this kind of romantic ideal lends itself to dramatizing infatuation in a way that i find satisfying–it gives meaning to a powerful experience (one that i personally *hated* every time i experienced it) that’s outside your control. we don’t have feelings; feelings have us. but this idea that something good comes from that overwhelming wave of longing, or that we can turn it into something good: that’s the power. that’s reclaiming ourselves in the throes of infatuation. 

*Slytherins remain silent*

but uGH book!harry was so passionate and charismatic and witty and sarcastic and a natural leader and he didn’t fucking need ginny to yell at a group to stfu to get them to listen to him because if harry wanted you to listen he would MAKE YOU FUCKING LISTEN because when he was angry he was intimidating as fuck and he had this intensity about him like he was usually pretty chill and laid back and up for a laugh but you knew if you really pissed him off he might kill you because he had so much inner rage because of his shitty life and sometimes he would explode and he also had an ego like he was humble but also arrogant at times and he could be such a douche but also super nice and like he’ll save your life but he won’t bother being your friend because who the fuck are you to him really and jesus fucking christ HE WAS SO INTERESTING and movie!harry is like blandass oatmeal with no flavor like he was just such a flat character with no charisma NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY DID TO HARRY.

There’s a difference between “intimidation” and “intimacy”.

posting your fic on AO3 like

I’m feeling called out.

OK, look.

there’s a misconception that grief only happens when we lose people. this is not true. we can grieve circumstances, relationships, missed opportunities. in fact, sometimes when you find yourself plagued with waves of emotion from sadness to melancholy you may be grieving yourself. the version of yourself that you might have been if things had been different, or if only you had said something, or if someone had stood up for you.

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